


Better With Two (squared)

by allegoricalrose (SilentStars)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Babies, Crack, F/M, Fluff, Multi, OT3, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:15:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5568748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/pseuds/allegoricalrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Well. This was going to be an interesting conversation.</i> OT3 Pregnancy!fic, 87% crack</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better With Two (squared)

She stares at the information in her hand.  


She blinks. 

Well. This was going to be an interesting conversation.

“Are you almost done in there?” she calls out over the sound of running water. “I need to talk to you.” Rose twists her fingers together as she waits, chewing her lip and curling her toes and yep, there’s the queasiness although possibly a little more fluttery and less churning than that to which she’s become accustomed. In the morning. Like clockwork. For the last few weeks. 

Really, how two people failed to put the pieces together before now is a mystery. 

(Maybe it’s all the glorious sex.)

(It’s all gloriously distracting.)

“Seriously, how long can your hair take?” She pauses. Frowns. “Is that the blow-dryer I hear?” 

No answer.

“Oh god, please tell me we’re not backcombing again!”

“Two ticks!” finally chimes out from behind an ensuite door and she’s thankful yet again that the TARDIS made her a separate bathroom all to herself. She needs it some days. What with the mountain of Bed Head products.

(Other days it’s all about the glorious shower sex.)

(In _her_ shower. The other shower is too slippery. From hair gel.)

 _Two ticks_. Figures a Lord of Time (and space) would use the least precise metric of time imaginable. She flops back onto the bed and shuts her eyes as she mutters to herself about Time Lord habits. It’s like they were all raised in a barn. 

Her eyes remain shut as the ensuite door finally slides open and the mattress sags beside her.

“Rose?” 

She hums noncommittally. The bed’s really quite comfortable and it’s rare she gets to enjoy it for its intended use. 

(Due to all the afore-mentioned Glorious Sex.)

“Are you alright? Rose?”

Ah, right. The whole life-shattering news conversation. She’d almost forgotten. 

(Possible side effect of Glorious Sex, memory loss.)

(Worth it.)

Sitting up and leaning back on an elbow, she retrieves the tissue-wrapped object off the nightstand and deposits it in the centre of the bed. 

“Want to tell me how in the name of ‘completely sterile, we all are, Rose’ Time Lord sperm this could have happened?” 

A sharp intake of breath and a gulp.

“You’re…” The Doctor’s trailed off exclamation is simultaneously disbelieving and sweetly reverent for a moment.  Unsurprisingly however, babbling commences.

“But you can’t be…”

“I can’t…but you…”

“Are you, er, yes, of course, but…”

“But. But I—but you—but we—but I—”

“Doctor,” she finally interjects when it goes on long enough. The room goes quiet and it’s all averted eyes and darting glances. “Doctor. Look at me.”

And when she’s finally caught the four eyes of the man she loves, she smiles, wide and slow. 

“I’m pregnant. It’s yours or, you know, yours.” She takes a deep breath; two sets of lungs follow her lead. “And I’m really happy about it.”

\--

The squeals and hugs and glistening eyelashes last approximately two minutes.

“It’s obviously mine, you know.” 

“What? It most certainly is not. I’m the original Time Lord; if there’s any miracle sperm here it has to be mine. Superior physiology.”

Rose leans back on her elbows again and watches the Doctor in a brown pinstriped suit and baby blue shirt reel back in astonishment at the Doctor in a brown pinstriped suit and powder blue shirt.

(She gave up trying to tell them apart months ago. As far as she’s concerned, they’re one man in two bodies.)

(Two tall lanky bodies of sex.)

“Excuse me? You know that makes absolutely no sense! Your so-called ‘superior’ physiology is exactly what makes you sterile. It’s _clearly_ the slight human epigenetic mutations in me that allowed my manly penis to ejaculate manly sperm.” Neither man is distracted by Rose’s gagging on the bed. “Potent sperm. _Virile_ sperm. Sperm of—”

“Exactly, _mutations._ Quite frankly, you’re lucky you’re not impotent.”

“Ha! You wish!”

They both turn to Rose. 

“Roooose!”

“Roooose!”

A single eyebrow is lifted at the pair.

“Tell him the baby is mine!”

“It’s _mine_!”

“Mine!”

Rose raises her eyebrows. “To be honest, Doctor, whoever’s baby it is promised me that we didn’t need birth control without actually testing themselves properly. And I’m not happy about _that_ , let me tell you.”

Two faces blanche. 

“It’s probably yours, you know. After Bad Wolf and all that, I bet human DNA couldn’t penetrate those goddess ova anyway.”

“Naaah, you might be right. You’re the only one with genetic deviations from sterile Time Lord TNA.”

Rose gives up and flops back completely onto a pillow, tucking her hands under her head. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“No,” one Doctor agrees, a little sulkily.

“Suppose not,” the other concurs with a slight pout. 

A man curls into each of her sides, nuzzling the ticklish underside of her arms. 

“I’m really happy too, Rose,” they murmur in perfect unison. 

A hand from the Doctor on her left makes it to the patch of exposed skin on her lower belly before the one from the Doctor on her right by mere milliseconds. The losing hand ghosts up to cup her breast instead and there’s a light growl from the other’s throat in response. She closes her eyes as two sets of lips begin charting constellations across her entire body, open-mouthed and humming. 

“Rose?” she hears intoned into her skin.

“Mmm?” Yep, this is _exactly_ what she cannoned across all those universes for. 

“I think—” one whispers.

“we should still—” the other mumbles around a moan.

“get you and the baby examined—”

“as soon as possible.”

“Just to be safe,” the Doctor licking a stripe from naval to hipbone says.

“Just to be safe.” The Doctor holding up her pajama t-shirt to engulf her nipple with his mouth says, the vibrations sending a shiver straight down her spinal cord. 

“Mmm, okay, whatever you say.” She arches up against the tongue dipping below her waistband and tugs the closest mouth up to hers by its hair. 

But then two mouths are gone, not to mention two heat sources at her sides. 

She opens her eyes with a scowl. “What..?”

“No time to waste; hop to it, Rose Tyler!”

“Up and at’em!”

“Early bird catches the worm!”

She’s still buzzing, nerves aflame, and she stares blankly at the Time Lord(s). 

“Huh?”

“OB-GYN appointment. Pip pip! We’ll be late!”

“No time like the present! Or the future in the present, as I always say!”

“I never say that!”

“Well, I should.”

Rolling over onto her stomach, she flings her arm over her eyes to block out the overly-energetic aliens. “Later, yeah? Get back in bed with me or let me go back to sleep. I’m pregnant, if you missed the bulletin.”

She thinks she’s gotten lucky when the bed dips on both sides but a moment later she’s struggling in their two-person hold, one set of hands under her shoulders and the other set beneath her knees. “Fine, fine,” she finally relents after they’re carried her half-way to the console room. “I need to get dressed though. And take a shower.”

The identical men sigh an identical sigh. “Do you really? You’ll just have to de-robe anyway…”

“And put that open-backed gown thing on…”

“Mmm…” Both Doctors’s eyes go glassy, clearly imagining Rose in said backless medical gown.

“YES, Doctor.” She’d be putting her foot down if it were anywhere near the floor.

They grudgingly deposit her onto the grating and magnanimously allow her to walk of her own steed back to their room, following behind her at a single pace like two overly-serious bodyguards. 

She _does_ manage to distract them once they’re in the shower. 

(By her new keratin deep conditioning treatment on the shelf.)

(And sex. Glorious, glorious newly-pregnant shower sex.)  

\--

Even with two sets of hands navigating, the TARDIS lands one billion years too early for single cell organisms much less backless medical gowns and proceeds to plant herself in the volcanic rock for the near future.

(Or past, the Doctor adds, chuffed at his own brilliance

(Or present, the Doctor appends with glee.)

(Or future probabilities of glorious sex if the time-punnage keeps up, Rose notes.)

The Doctor spends their next few days on a rotating schedule, consisting of 

  1. Cursing beneath the console when the TARDIS refuses to budge.
  2. Freaking out and flapping their hands at the idea of a baby on the TARDIS  (“A _baby!_ On the _TARDIS_ , Rose! It’s infinite, how can you baby-proof infinity??”)
  3. Freaking out and flapping their hands at the idea of a baby out in the wilds of the universe. (“A _baby!_ Helpless and defenseless and vulnerable _in the universe!_ Nowhere is safe! How can you baby-proof the universe, Rose??”)
  4. Bestowing upon Rose what is likely the first ever recorded case of lip burn on her belly.
  5. Arguing with himself (sometimes Rose, the TARDIS, the spewing volcano, the wall) over whether he’s the father or whether it’s himself.
  6. Composing angsty poetry in his journal, tearing the page out with a wail that would make a teenager proud and completely missing the bin every time.



Oh so luckily for Rose they manage to stagger their obsessive loops so that one of them is always at her side (or stomach, as the case may be) and by the third day she begins to eye the rocks melting into the bubbling magma with a slight bit of envy. 

But the TARDIS takes pity on her eventually (read: four days of manic-Doctor hell) and allows a dematerialization sequence that sends them back into the vortex for another try. Rose’s palms grow sweaty when they land again but there’s only a hospital waiting room behind the faux-wooden door and she breathes a sigh of relief.   

It’s sometime in the 39th century and the medical professional barely bats an eyelid at two men hurriedly leading her up to the reception desk like she’s 40 weeks and in labour. 

“Rose Doctor, I mean, Rose Lungbarrow, no, Mrs. Rose Wolf, no, dammit what did I book this under?” 

“First name Rose, appointment at 10!”

“Did we miss it?!” 

“We can try again!”

“Forget you ever saw us! Timelines!”

They’re wide eyed and frantic and she feels bad for breaking down into giggles but there’s no stopping it. 

It doesn’t help the situation.

“Is hysteria an early warning sign of foetal complications?”

“Rose! Rose, can you hear me? She must be hypoxic – we need oxygen, stat!”

The receptionist watches the commotion calmly. “Fill this out and the doctor will be with you shortly.” 

Rose takes the clipboard when the woman refuses to relinquish her grip when two pinstriped idiots grab for it and shakes her finger at them in admonishment. “Thanks. It’s Rose Tyler, by the way.”

“You’re fine. I suppose I don’t need to ask if this is your first pregnancy,” she says wryly through a smile as she taps some information into her computer, shooting a sharp look at the Doctor attempting to aim his sonic screwdriver at the screen. He slinks back, tail between legs.

With a huff of laughter, Rose shakes her head in acknowledgement and drags the love of her life over to the bank of chairs by their shirtsleeves. Once they’re seated, she rests the clipboard on her knees and wrenches them close by the tender hair on the back of their necks. 

“Listen to me,” she orders with a slight growly undertone and their mouths drop in unison. “From now on, you will not be speaking. _I_ will talk to the OB-GYN and if you say even a peep, you’ll be listening in through your creepily sensitive ears from the waiting room.” They blink at her. She tightens her grip. “Got it?” 

“But—”

“What if—“

“Fingers on lips,” she rebukes between clenched teeth.

They open their mouths as if to protest but the expression on her face halts them in their tracks. 

“Sorry, Rose,” one of them mutters, ducking his head. 

“Yeah. Sorry,” the other repeats, both suitably repentant. 

“Good.” She sits back and starts on the medical history form. “And I can do this by myself, just to head off any unhelpful interjections from the two of you. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing here about history of vortex exposure or nanogene vaccination dates.” 

They nod their heads quickly in response, eyes wide.  

After a moment, she has to pause, biting her lip and glancing between the preternaturally quiet men (they’re watching at her with full and utter attention of course). 

She clears her throat. 

“Um. How old am I, again?”

When they’re eventually called into the examination room, she just about catches a furtive whisper from behind her back. 

“Rose is _definitely_ on top tonight.” 

She turns in time to catch a vigorous nod from the recipient.

\--

Dr. Alexander is lovely and the Time Lords keep their mouths zipped for the most part as she asks Rose a few questions and prepares an instant blood test to confirm the pregnancy. There’s an almost inaudible whimper of relief when the giant tablet on the wall displays a large plus sign but since Rose isn’t entirely sure whether she or the Doctor produced the noise, she lets it slide. 

“You’re about four weeks along, from the look of things. Congratulations.”

“See, it’s a ‘t’ for Ten,” one of the Doctors hisses under his breath to other in their seats at the far corner of the room. “The baby’s mine.”

“It’s a positive symbol, you pillock. Besides, I’m Ten, too.”

“You know it’ll have two hearts.”

“Obviously. My single heart is only an epigenetic gene silencing; it won’t be passed on to the baby. My baby.”

“I had no idea I was so delusional.”

Even their quiet bickering doesn’t faze her anymore; a wave of fuzzy warmth has kindled in her chest and is pulsating down into the tips of her toes and out every hair follicle and all she wants at that moment is to hop off the examination table and sob with happiness into their arms. Unfortunately, the obstetrician has set up the stirrups and is about to delve between her legs so it’s probably not the right moment. She’ll take a rain check; why’d she been so irritated with them the last few days, again? 

The Doctor’s baby, _her and the Doctor’s baby_ is growing in her womb, cells splitting and multiplying and specialising and she’s not sure she’s ever been more awestruck at the sight of anything in the entire universe than the vision of an event she can’t even see.

And then she’s proven wrong when a handheld scanner is placed over her lower abdomen. But it’s not the sight of the bundle of clustered cells that leaves her gasping in awe: it’s second-hand awe from the look on the Doctor’s faces at they gaze at the monitor with what can only be described as rapture.  

“ _Our_ baby.”

“ _Our_ baby, Rose.”

Her lips are close to cracking. “Ours _._ ”

Akimbo legs and medical technology be damned – they’re at her sides immediately and the rest of the appointment is conducted between Dr. Alexander and a three-headed unit. 

\--

As they leave the office, a nurse pops her head around the corner to watch the two new fathers fumble with the mountain of ultrasound printouts they’d requested, clutching them in their arms with proud/smug smiles as they attempt to open the door without hands. 

“Yours?” the nurse asks, eyeing the view. Their trousers _are_ rather tight today. Possibly all that stress eating they’ve been doing.

“Oh yeah,” Rose says. “All mine.”

“Lucky,” the woman hums with one more appraising sweep and a wink in her direction. 

Rose grins and runs to catch up with two of the three best rewards she’s ever been granted, scooping up the trail of black and white pictures in their wake. “Don’t I know it!”

(She’sindeed on top five minutes later.)

(And then below. And on the side and diagonal and basically just entangled.)

(The sex is glorious. And if their competition shifts from parentage to the number of orgasms they can bestow on her, so be it.)

\--

Four rewards. 

Four. 

“Twins!”

Six eyes gawk at Dr. Alexander during their next visit. 

She punches some more keys. 

“One amniotic sac, one placenta: identical twins!”

Two identical mouths drop in identical wide grins. The other, more feminine, mouth remains agape and then erupts into hysterical laughter. 

She _is_ given oxygen this time.  

\--

The Doctor and the Doctor resolve one day, shortly after learning of their binary stars, that settling down in the wilderness of Mongolia is the best option to keep Rose and Baby and Baby safe from the ravages of the wild universe.

“Safe like from mad men burning up suns?” Rose asks with raised eyebrow, stalling to buy herself some time to figure out how to avoid living in the _bloody Gobi desert,_ of all places.  

“Funny you should say that—” one answers excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

“—because shock waves from supernovae can create new stars—” the other interjects, his words tumbling out his mouth in an eager rush. 

“—star deaths pressing together molecular clouds, death begetting life—”

“—triggered star formations, Rose!”

“—colliding nebulae, Rose!”

“And love also creates babies—”

“—and I burnt that sun just to say I loved you—”

“—not that I managed it—”

“—but that’s beside the point. You knew, anyway.”

She knew. She knows. She’ll always know. They can have their bloody Mongolian desert for all she cares; as long as they’re alien duplicate ex-nomads and their pregnant British human randomly living in the bloody Mongolian desert _together_.

A yurt is procured as their dwelling, a fence built, a sonic fire stoked. Elaborate plans of victory gardens and milk cows being flown in from Switzerland drawn up. The TARDIS is powered down in a nearby field just in case it gets caught in a tractor beam or Dalek chronon loop or something. Again.

The tent is of course stuffy and claustrophobic so the custom-made oversized feather-padded ‘pallet’ is dragged under the stars and two men slip Rose’s new maternity dress off her shoulders and clothe her instead with kiss-embroidered warm bodies. 

The one-hearted Doctor tugs her backward into his naked lap, sliding his fingers under the waistband of the only scrap of lace covering her body and building her up with light nails scraping across heavy nerves until she’s wet enough that his fingers glide inside her with only the faintest pressure. When his thumb begins twisting into her most concentrated bundle of nerves she’s powerless to stop herself grinding down onto him, attempting to maneuver herself so that the hard heat pressed against her bum is closer to where she’s aching for it and whines when he stills her with a firm hand to her hip. Instead he adds another finger and then another until she’s crying out from the glorious fullness of existence. 

The two-hearted Doctor is kneeling at her front, tracing complex circular patterns around her aureoles with one hand while the other is wound in her hair, holding her tightly across his chest as he breaks her down with his lips against hers. When the Doctor below finally sheathes himself in her heat, lace in tatters in the sand, the other takes his place at her neck, whispering concupiscent streams of consciousness. He pulls her legs apart so that they’re locked behind the thrusting man’s knees and with a deep-throated moan begins rocking himself into her stomach, the underside of his cock slipping along her folds and brushing along her clit with a rhythm perfectly syncopated to the Doctor pistoning inside her.   

She’s been strung up tight and released twice by the time the Doctor comes inside her and she’s strung up and released twice more after she’s lowered to the pallet and the Doctor slides inside her for his turn while the Doctor recovers into the pillow of her breasts. 

The vast expanse of desert swallows their groans and pleas and it’s so quiet, so silent as they breathe one another’s breaths that she swears she can hear the stars singing, the constellations setting their myths to three-part harmonies. The Doctors tell her they’re psalmodies about her, the girl who put them back in the sky, and though she snorts at their hyperbolic pillow talk, she remembers being trapped in that other universe and the feeling of watching the constellations fade away like forgotten gods. It’s the first time she’s been able to view them, complete and in their rightful places, since her first night in that parallel world when she lay under the Nordic stars and sobbed over tragic Greek mythology.

It’s so much better now. So much better with the Doctor at her side; so much better with two. 

\--

The Doctors last 23 hours in the sanctuary of Mongolia.

(And only because 22 of those hours are spent entwined together in bed.)

(Star-canopied sex, Rose decides, is particularly glorious.)

\--

Next the over-protective fathers insist on a Zone 6 London flat in a good school catchment area with a doorman and a purpose-built security system. 

The day they move in, one Doctor is too shaky to walk home from the corner Waitrose after he and Rose stock up on supplies.

(“ROSE! STOP! THE BABIES CAN’T HAVE ASPIRIN!”)

(“This is a bottle of tomato ketchup.”)

The other Doctor lasts three hours, during which time he’s de-prickled the decorative prickly cactus with tweezers and is considering starting on the leg hairs of the sedated Time Lord on the couch. 

A single mother on a nearby estate receives keys and a ten-year lease in her mailbox the next day.

\--

They propose staying the vortex.

Indefinitely.

“Plenty of power and food, Rose!”

“Have you seen how many channels the telly gets, Rose?”

“We can pretend we’re letting the universe pass us by, Rose!”

“Poets have waxed on about this for years, Rose!”

“Just you and me and me!”

“And Baby! And Baby!”

Rose threatens them with unknown dangers of prolonged vortex exposure on developing hybrid fetuses (the TARDIS has told her they’re fine). 

They’re on solid ground within the hour. 

(And right into the infirmary. She regrets her bluff sixteen hours of medical tests later.) 

(Not the glorious kind of doctor play, sadly.)

\--

It’s back to travelling like the normal nomads they are and no one feels the need to mention aloud that the TARDIS only allows them to land in locations without timeline aberrations. 

The babies are growing at an alarming rate, at least it seems that way to Rose, and she feels like a whale before she’s even halfway through the pregnancy. She’s always hot, even in the snow-covered planets she’d insist on more often except that her feet are so swollen that closed-toe shoes can’t be legal under the Geneva Convention. She’s weeing what feels like five times an hour and there are spots in places there shouldn’t ever be spots and ughhh she’s so bloody hot all the time!

But apparently the Doctor is blind and impervious to the boatload of sweat she imagines to slosh around in all her _wonderful new_ _crevices and rolls._ If she’d thought they’d had a rampant sex life before, she needs to adjust her rating scale parameters: at some point she’d asked if she was emitting some sort of pregnancy hormone that their weird Time Lord noses were picking up on or something (she’d say Time Lord catnip but they’re more like rabbits). Turns out pheromones don’t actually exist in humans. 

She’s still suspicious. 

Because sweaty, spotty, weeing _whale_. 

It’s not just the frequent (and increasingly creative) bedroom aspects either; they can’t seem to stop touching her. In addition to not being able to see her feet anymore (something quite frankly she’s okay with. See: swollen grossness) she’s usually deprived of her peripheral vision as well: anytime they walk _anywhere_ she’s flanked by a man on both sides, each with one arm wrapped around her waist and cupping the swell of her belly.  There are stares but after awhile she stops caring; instead she struts like the goddess that the two handsome men at her heels make her feel. 

(It’s admittedly a position that leaves her arms flopping in front in the most un-goddesslike fashion until she learns she can store her hands in pinstriped pockets and steer with startling alacrity.)

(It’s also a position that tends to end in sweaty whale goddess sex within the hour.)

(There are few positions that don’t end in sweaty whale goddess sex within the hour.)

(Glorious sweaty whale goddess sex.)

\--

One trip somehow involves a parallel universe and a parallel Rose.

Four pairs of eyes light up at the sight.

One pair of hands immediately drags them back to the TARDIS. 

“Nope. Nope nope nope.”

(She thinks she’s had more than her fair share of doubles until there are two pairs of apologetic lips on her neck. And then around both nipples. And down to two hipbones and between two hypersensitive folds and ohhh a pair of tongues and a pair of fingers and then two pairs of two fingers, stretching, and oh _fuck_ , a pair of—)

\--

The quickening happens on a rare moment when she’s alone in the loo (and only because they’re on a spaceship somewhere along the Kuiper belt and the Doctor’s handling the tricky navigation while the Doctor attends to a medical bay full of pilots with food poisoning only _allegedly_ from fresh banana daiquiris). Her hands fly to her belly at the first fluttering kick and its resounding echo a moment later, like she’s grown a new heart and it’s thrumming like mad. Except that’s it’s not a new heart, it’s four new hearts. Except that it’s actually seven new hearts. 

Eight hearts pacing the rhythm to which she’ll march to the rest of her life and only one inhabits her chest. 

An asteroid auto-navigation system is invented three centuries early and in only 2.56 seconds. 

The pilots can vomit into their kidney-shaped dishes unattended for a few minutes.

Her three pinstriped hearts race in to find her crying on the toilet seat, arms wrapped around her abdomen like she’s worried the fetuses might wander off. The kicks increase in frequency under their fathers’ hands and of course they’re daddies’ girls. 

\--

Sixteen expert doctors, fifty nurses, an entire wing of the best hospital in time or space, and a dyschronic collection of medical equipment is kept on-call for the last month of Rose’s pregnancy.

In the end nothing goes to plan.  


(No one is surprised).

The babies are delivered in Jackie and Pete’s bedroom on Christmas Eve, two expert Doctors between her legs and one mum holding her hand. There aren’t any complications if you don’t count hyperactive and slightly panic-stricken new fathers or several threats of a palliative slap from their mother-not-quite-in-law. 

Or mixing up the girls within a few minutes of their birth. 

(It’s an odd feeling, having to consider two identical beings as separable entities.) 

(It’s an odd feeling, having to consider the two beings as separable from her own body.)  


(They’re not separable. Not yet. The twins sleep curled up into one other, curled up on their mother’s chest, curled up between their fathers’ arms and limbs, tangled up in the entangled nervous systems of their parents and one another.) 

\--

(Glorious Sex has to be postponed for six weeks but there’s something far more glorious wrapped in matching yellow star-shaped bunting)

(They’re named for a five-starred constellation as seen from an extinct planet with orange grass and silver-leafed trees, Earth’s sun occupying the centre position. The Doctor claims the Gallifreyan word for her star means red flower but she only rolls her eyes at their adamancy.)

(Rose paints the wall behind the cribs with their star formation, echoes from a burnt-up sun on a far corner, and the TARDIS labels the room as the stellar nursery on all official control panels.)

(The Doctors paint their daughters' celestial coordinates onto their own skin.)

(They’re _oh_ so gloriously happy.)

\--

Rose opens her eyes in the dark and right on cue a second later, a whimper fills the silence and her sister’s cries echo back first in empathy and then in hunger. 

A whimper rings out from the body on her right and is echoed back from the body on her left. 

It only takes another second before they’re out of the bed like a shot, dashing to their posts and retrieving the fussing babies from their cot. She’ll never tire of the way their bodies rock in perfect synchrony, whispering identical coos of comfort to their identical daughters as they lower them into their mother’s waiting arms and guide their lips to her breasts. 

The men swap places so that they get turns with both of their baby girls, tucking the nursing pillow under their heads and supporting their tiny little bodies at their mother’s sides. Rose carefully slides down in bed and closes her eyes again, winding her fingers in the Doctor’s hair as they lay curled into her sides too, nuzzling her neck and gazing in rapture at their greatest adventures. 

She sleeps through the feeding and the nappy changes, waking for the next round several hours later. Her Time Lords are wide awake, watching their children for any sign of distress or discomfort while tracing sonnets on their wife’s arms.

(Truthfully, she’s not sure what all the fuss is about: newborn twins aren’t really _that_ much work.)

(Maybe every new mother doesn’t have two besotted fathers fighting over who gets to change the nappy next?)

Life is brilliant. Back in that parallel universe, she never thought life could be this brilliant. Back before their daughters, she never thought life could be any more brilliant.

But it is. 

It’s just _better_. 

Better with two Doctors; better with a baby in each arm.

\--

It’s not all Glorious Sex™ and adorably clueless attempts at wrapping Rose and the growing twins in bubble wrap; the universe still needs saving some days, much as the TARDIS and her pilots try to avoid it and there are several close calls, a few that happen only days apart. 

But with each passing night as they’re curled up together in a hopelessly tangled knot, she notices a change in the Doctor, an openness and vulnerability he’d always hid before she’d been lost to the Pete’s World. And with the openness comes an increased responsiveness to the reassurance of her arms and the steady beat of his daughter’s hearts. Before long a simple touch, a single toothy baby smile, a clasp of the finger, a smell of a baby scalp is all it takes to bring him back to baseline and contrary to all the taunts of feelings making him weak, he’s stronger for it. He’s still the oncoming storm but there’s more power in its preceding calm than his enemies could ever fear in their wildest nightmares.

That and the fact that he now wields the strength of two looming tempests.

With two protostars and their mother to protect. 

(And then there’s the far greater danger of getting between a mother wolf and her family.)

The Daleks and Time Lords and cracks in the walls and religious groups and other coalitions with universe-mongering plots decide to postpone their start dates for the indeterminate future. 


End file.
